Category Archives: Marketplace of ideas

The artificial Horatio Alger

Here’s a socio-political Rorschach test for you. The Christian Science Monitor tells the story of a kid from a middle-class background in North Carolina who moved to Charleston and played homeless (if you’re from N.C., living in S.C. is probably as down-and-out as you can imagine) with $25 in his pocket and no prospects.

He wrote a book about it. It seems to be based on the premise that any poor person should be able to do this. Read it and see what you think.

And yeah, I know "Horatio Alger" is a stretch, since he was only trying to amass $2,500 in savings (and did twice that). But it was the best allusion I could think of.

Brooks makes case for Obama, whether meaning to or not

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David Brooks is the latest media type to espouse This Week’s Conventional Wisdom, which is to cast doubt on whether Barack Obama can deliver on all that hope he’s been dishing out.

Not that he trashes him or anything. When I first started reading this piece, which will be on tomorrow’s op-ed page, I thought it was yet another expression of Mr. Brooks’ fondness for Hillary Clinton. But then I read this sentence: "They see that her entire political strategy consists of waiting for primary states as boring as she is." Whoa. Way harsh, huh?

No, Mr. Brooks is just trying to keep us from building ourselves up for a disappointment with our Obamaphoria. And that’s a solid, conservative sort of thing to do, in the good, old-fashioned sense of "conservative."

But when he makes this point, he reminds me why I’m glad to be an Obamaniac:

And if he were president now, how would the High Deacon of Unity heal the breach that split the House last week?

You know what I had to do? I had to go down the hall and ask Mike what Mr. Brooks meant by that. (Mike knows stuff like that. Mikey will keep up with anything.)

It was just as I suspected. It was another one of those inside-the-Beltway, partisanship-for-partisanship things that happen to help interest groups raise money and give the blathering heads on 24/7 TV "news" something to blather about.

Mike explained that last week, all the Republicans in the House walked out over something the Democrats did having to do with Harriet Miers. That’s all I needed to know! Don’t tell me any more! This is obviously one of those things that I will cross the street to avoid knowing about. In fact, I immediately remembered having seen "Harriet Miers" in the headline of one of those hundreds of press releases from partisan warriors — I’m thinking it was John Boehner — that I delete without reading. Only Mr. Boehner says it was about something else altogether.

Don’t get me wrong, folks. The FISA Act, or the firings of federal prosecutors, or whatever this is purportedly about, is an important matter. But when it devolves into Democrats issuing contempt citations on Republicans, and Republicans trying to embarrass them right back by walking out over it, it just convinces me that ALL of them are wrong, and I wish they would all walk out, and not come back. And take Harriet Miers with you.

It just makes a sensible person want to sweep the board clean and start over.

And folks, that’s what we like about Obama. Every time Hillary Clinton speaks of her "35 years of experience," we know she means 35 years of this kind of stuff. And we don’t want any more.

In the end, Brooks puts his finger on the source of Obama’s appeal with great precision. We don’t care whether he’s demonstrated he can deliver on all the promises or not (something Hillary can’t do, either; think "health care reform"). As Mr. Brooks says, "At least this candidate seems likely to want to head in the right direction."

Read My Lips: ‘No New Taxes’ is a stupid, irresponsible thing to say

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George H.W. Bush’s "no new taxes" pledge was a watershed moment for me. It was an idiotic thing for a reasonably bright man who knew better to say, and we know why he said it, right? To charm the Reagan revolutionaries, who might otherwise have listened to all that "wimp factor" talk.

But it was more than that to me. It caused me to become permanently disenchanted with campaign promises in general. No one knows what kinds of decisions he will face in office. There is something very phony about pretending to know, and presuming to predict what you will do. You end up with such absurdities as the latest George Bush spouting against nation-building, then spending most of his time in office trying to do just that (although botching it badly enough, for most of that time, to convince us he was never that into it).

This idea developed further as I moved from news to editorial in the early ’90s. News is about "What did he say; what did he do; what did they other guy do; did their actions match their words?" and other stuff that just makes me tired now. I began to think more about what candidates, and far more importantly, office-holders should do. I thought more and more about the nature of representative democracy, and came to appreciate the system more deeply. And the more I thought about it, the more I came to appreciate character over specific policy proposals. I think our system works best when we elect a candidate we trust to make good decisions come what may. I care less about the specifics of policy proposals (which in most cases will never become reality in that form), and more about the quality of the individual proposing them. Past actions count a lot. So do words, in the sense that they reveal the kind of person the candidate is. The fact that a candidate is the kind of person who would want to do a certain thing will matter more than the specifics. So would the intangible qualities revealed in the way the candidate communicates his or her ideas. For that reason, the fact that Obama speaks of approaching challenges as one nation, and is able to sell that approach to voters, contrasted against Sen. Clinton’s world view of life as a constant struggle against Republicans, matter more to me than the specifics of, say, their respective health care plans. If their health care plans were polar opposites, it would mean something. But they’re not, and I don’t care to quibble over them. This approach can be extremely frustrating to such people as today’s caller.

It does make a difference to me when a candidate lacks a serious proposal to address health care. I criticized John McCain on this point several months back. But as important as this issue is to me, it’s not a make-or-break one in considering the presidency. Truth is, no candidate but Dennis Kucinich wants to do what I want to do on the issue — and Rep. Kucinich cancels that out by putting me off on other issues. Among the Republicans, Mitt Romney probably came the closest to wanting to do anything good — but that wasn’t nearly enough, and it didn’t cancel the reasons NOT to support Romney. (Biggest reason? Rather than run as a guy who’d done something smart on health care in Massachusetts, he tried to pander to every impulse to be found in his party, and tried to get ahead by pulling other candidates down. Character.)

This brings us to what John McCain said this week: "No new taxes." This was a reprehensible thing to say. I know McCain is a national-security guy and just isn’t into the stuff that the anti-tax part of his party obsess over. That’s one of many things I like about him. But that doesn’t excuse him from throwing them a bone to this extent, even if he did it so badly that it wasn’t convincing (as Nicholas Kristof says, "he is abysmal at pandering").

Now let’s pause for a moment to make sure you understand what I’m saying. The tax haters don’t understand why I say it’s inexcusable to say, before you’re even in office, "No new taxes." That’s because they think the only thing to do with a tax — ever, under any circumstances — is to cut it, and they think anyone who doesn’t agree with their extreme must be their extreme polar opposite, which to them means that person, in one of their favorite phrases, "never saw a tax he didn’t like." They really say things like that. It doesn’t bother them a bit that such accusations are insupportable, and that in fact evidence exists to the contrary. Their world view is just that simple, and just that wrong.

McCain’s world view is not that simple, and therefore it is profoundly wrong for him to say what he said, even if he just said it to shut them up so we can talk about more important things (understandable, but still not excusable). Perhaps he believes that there never will be a need during a McCain presidency to raise a tax, so what’s the harm?

Here’s the harm: Let me put it in terms that he might understand, because they would touch more closely upon his own deeply held values. Think how stupid, how grossly irresponsible, it would be for the man who would be commander in chief to say, "I will never take military action" in office. See what I’m saying? You might like to think you’d never have to send another soldier into harm’s way, and you might want voters to know you’re the kind of guy who likes to think that. Perfectly understandable. But perfectly wrong. The would-be commander in chief of the world’s one superpower just can’t take force off the table like that.

Mind you, this is not a perfect comparison — a president has greater leeway in taking military action than he does in making tax policy (properly speaking, the purview of Congress; all the president can do is make non-binding proposals or wield the blunt instrument of the veto — he can’t even veto line items). But my point is that the thing that’s wrong here is not the policy question itself. Peace is a fine thing. Not raising taxes is a fine thing.

But you cannot know what future situations will call for, and it’s wrong to try to tie your hands in advance. And it’s particularly wrong to do it to win votes.

It’s not the policy; it’s the character. And saying "no new taxes" this way places a stain upon John McCain’s. (It also makes him look desperate; if he’ll say that to appease the extremists, would he actually consider such a disastrous choice as Mark Sanford for veep? It was the desperation and the irresponsibility in this statement on taxes that caused me actually to worry about something I had dismissed as merely ridiculous before.)

Does the stain disqualify him? Not in my eyes. His virtues far outweigh this sin. And consider that the pandering, hands-tying statements that Sens. Barack and Clinton routinely make regarding Iraq are far more egregious. I am somewhat reassured to believe that both of them know better, but it doesn’t make me think more of their characters.

Nor does it cause me to dismiss them altogether — particularly not Obama, whose character seems so much better suited to the office than Mrs. Clinton’s.

All of us are stained; no one is qualified to throw the first stone. But I do pick up these stones as I find them, and place them on the balance. As I weigh them, I’m still very glad we endorsed John McCain and Barack Obama. The one perfect guy isn’t actually running.

Here’s what Don Fowler was talking about

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Speaking of parties and partisanship, I ran across something interesting in our archives yesterday while searching for something completely unrelated. You may (but probably don’t) recall this from my account of my exchange with Don Fowler last month regarding his having urged Hillary Clinton not to speak to our editorial board:

But I’d never had such a frustrating conversation with someone as well
educated and experienced as Don, his party’s former national chairman.
He kept clinging to this notion that we would never endorse anyone with
the name Clinton — which made no sense to me — what’s in a name; are
we Montagues and Capulets here? I mean, if he knows that, he
knows something I don’t know. He said he based his absolute conclusion
on a visit he made to the editorial board on Bill Clinton’s behalf in
1996. Not remembering the specifics of that meeting, I didn’t get into
it, but I pointed out that of the five current members of the board,
I’m the only one who was on the board then. No matter. He suggested
that the fix was in, that we would endorse the Republican no matter
what, and that it must hold just as true today as then.

Now I can say I do recall the specifics of that meeting, because I ran across a forgotten column that was inspired by it. Here it is, in its entirety:

THE STATE
PARTIES: WHAT ARE THEY GOOD FOR? ABSOLUTELY NOTHING
Published on: 11/05/1996
Section: EDITORIAL
Edition: FINAL
Page: A10
By BRAD WARTHEN
Don Fowler came to visit last week, to try to persuade our editorial board to endorse the Clinton-Gore ticket. There never was much chance of that, but we were glad to talk with him anyway.
Don Fowler is the Columbian who took the helm of the Democratic National Committee in one of that party’s darkest hours, when Newt Gingrich and his enfants terrible had supposedly captured the hearts and minds of all "normal people" for good.
Today, less than two years later, there is talk of the Democrats taking back the House, on the coattails of the first Democratic president to win re-election since 1936. That gives Mr. Fowler reason to feel pretty good about being a Democrat these days — the gathering storm over Asian campaign contributors notwithstanding (much of which has broken in the days since our interview). So it probably seemed inappropriate when I asked him this question: "What earthly good are political parties to our country today?"
He apologized that he’d have to preface his answer with a brief historical overview. And like the college lecturer he has been, he proceeded to do just that. I settled in to wait patiently. I really wanted an answer to this question.
You see, I have this prejudice against political parties. I consider them to be among the most destructive factors in public life today. It’s not that the parties themselves cause the nastiness and intellectual dishonesty that stain our political discourse. They just provide a means for these phenomena to manifest themselves without individuals having to take responsibility for any of it. Far worse, partisan considerations militate against solutions to the real problems that face our society.
A lot of smart people whom I otherwise admire, such as political writers David Broder and E.J. Dionne, have suggested in years past that the main thing wrong with Congress is that party discipline is a thing of the past — too many members out there pursuing their own agendas on their own terms instead of working their way up through the party system the way God and Sam Rayburn intended.
But I think that we’ve all seen altogether too much partisan groupthink in recent years. For instance: The most responsible thing Bill Clinton tried to do in his first year in office was to present a deficit-reduction plan that was a model of nonpartisan sobriety, and which was destined to actually improve the situation. So, of course, not one Republican in either house of Congress voted for it. Not only did they vote against it, they’ve spent the past three years misrepresenting it to the people.
But that pales in comparison to the disinformation campaign the GOP conducted over the Clinton health plan. The plan never had a chance, which in a way was too bad, seeing as how most Americans wanted something done about health-care costs and availability, but what was that next to the need for the GOP to achieve its strategic objectives?
The voters punished the GOP for that by giving it control of the Congress. Now, the party had to govern. So Republicans set about trying to rein in Medicare costs.
Turnabout’s fair play, thought the Democrats in unison, and they proceeded to torpedo the GOP’s effort to be sensible by scaring the nation’s old people half to death. It worked. Never mind the fact that Medicare is still a mess — the Democrats are resurgent, having prevented the GOP from doing anything to help the country.
That’s what political parties do for us. What would I replace them with? Nothing. I’d send each successful candidate into office all by his lonesome. He couldn’t get into office or stay there by characterizing his opponent as a "tax- and-spend liberal" or someone who "wants to take away your Social Security." He’d have to come up with sensible ideas, and sell them on their merits. His colleagues, having no overriding partisan strategies, would be more likely to weigh the ideas on the same basis.
Back to Dr. Fowler. The short version of his answer to my question goes like this:
There has historically been a consensus in our country about certain basic principles, such as individual freedom, the sanctity of elections, the dominance of the private sector in our economy, the Bill of Rights and the viability of our basic structure of government.
That leaves room for disagreement and political competition over such things as economic interests. So the Democrats have positioned themselves as representing the interests of the less well off, while Republicans have appealed to the more fortunate (and those who think they will be). Americans, Dr. Fowler went on, are not a very political people. We like to go about our individual pursuits, and only pay attention to electoral politics when the time rolls around to go vote.
So it is, he said, that elephants and donkeys and such provide a service to our inattentive electorate: "The political party provides a political shorthand for enabling them to vote their economic interests without talking about it and arguing about it every day."
Precisely. That’s exactly why I don’t like parties, only I would say the same thing in a slightly different way: Political parties enable us to vote without having to think.
All content © THE STATE and may not be republished without permission.

So what does this tell us? It tells me that Dr. Fowler read my statement that "There never was much chance of" our endorsing Clinton-Gore in 1996, and extrapolated it to mean that this editorial board, even with turnover that left me as the only surviving member of the 1996 board, would never endorse anyone named "Clinton."

This seems like a stretch to me for several reasons. First, this wasn’t even a column about not endorsing Clinton. Our endorsement of Bob Dole had run two days earlier. Here’s a copy of it. That editorial was written not by me, but by my predecessor, who retired in 1997. A little historical footnote here: I would have written the editorial except that by that point in the campaign, I could no longer do so in good conscience. Dole had run such a disastrous campaign that I could not be the one to tell voters (even anonymously) that he was better able to run the White House. So my editor, who still preferred Dole, wrote it instead. Dr. Fowler had no way of knowing any of that. But the context of the statement was clear: We had just endorsed Dole, and all that we had written about the race up to that point led naturally to such a conclusion — including editorials I had written myself, earlier in the campaign. I still thought Dole was a better man than Bill Clinton; I just no longer thought he’d be a better president. It was also clear I wasn’t going to win any argument on that point — hence my wording in that column.

Second, anyone who read past that perfectly factual, supportable observation (that there was no way the board would endorse Clinton), would get to the other points I made, which took either a balanced, or even positive, view of Mr. Clinton. For instance, just to repeat myself:

… The most responsible thing Bill Clinton tried to do in his first year
in office was to present a deficit-reduction plan that was a model of
nonpartisan sobriety, and which was destined to actually improve the
situation. So, of course, not one Republican in either house of
Congress voted for it. Not only did they vote against it, they’ve spent
the past three years misrepresenting it to the people.
But that pales in comparison to the disinformation campaign the GOP
conducted over the Clinton health plan. The plan never had a chance,
which in a way was too bad, seeing as how most Americans wanted
something done about health-care costs and availability, but what was
that next to the need for the GOP to achieve its strategic objectives?…

Again, remember: I am the only editorial board member left from those days. And could a reasonable person conclude that the guy who wrote that passage would never, ever endorse Bill Clinton — much less "a Clinton?" I would say not. I would say that this was a guy I had a chance of winning over. But that’s just me.

Anyway, all that aside, the point of the column was, as the headline suggests, to decry the disastrous effect that the political parties have on our politics. This has been a recurring theme in my work ever since, and I have never wavered from it. If you’ve read the paper on anything like a regular basis, there’s really no excuse for misunderstanding me on this point.

The villain of the piece was not Bill Clinton, or even Newt Gingrich, but the Democratic and Republican parties.

Put-up or shut-up time for bud

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This started as a comment back on this post, but I’m elevating it to post status:

OK, bud, put up or shut up time: So which party is it? I’ve made it absolutely clear to you over and over that when I use the term "partisan," I don’t use it in the sense of "having an opinion about an issue" — which seems to be your favored sense. I’ve made it clear that I am speaking of slavish identification with a political party (or the attendant disease of unvarying devotion to the "left" or "right," which increasing means the same thing in this country).

"Partisan," as it is used on this blog and as it is used about 99 percent of the time in this country, refers to sticking up for your party — and we talking Democrats or Republicans here, since the Libertarians and others aren’t really a factor — at all times, and always denigrating people of the "opposite" party. It means surrendering your ability to think to party platforms. It means thinking it really MATTERS whether someone is a Democrat or a Republican.

So, bud — what’s my party? Democratic? Republican? What’s my ideology: Left? Right?

Either state it, and support it, and let the other readers judge your thinking on the matter, or drop this business of taking a relatively esoteric sense of the word and using it for no other purpose whatsoever than to insult me. You know that’s what you’re doing, and there’s no other possible reason to do it than to have that effect. You know that partisanship is loathsome to me, and unless you have a profound reading comprehension problem you know WHY. I’m pretty sure you’ve never met anyone who has explained his aversion to partisanship more than I have. This means what you are doing is saying, "What does Brad despise most?" and deciding to call me that, which is a form or argument on the intellectual level of "I know you are, but what am I?"

You know that ad hominem attacks are verboten on this blog. You know that in particular, I don’t allow it from anonymous commenters. I have bent way the hell over backward for you on both points, mainly because I am the object rather than someone out there.

But I’ve had enough of it. Either support your assertion of my oh-so-obvious hypocrisy — and that means showing that I am precisely the sort of partisan that I myself condemn, in the common sense in which I use the term — or cut it out. Now.

What I do almost every waking level of my life is tell the world exactly what I think and why I think it. I am not going to provide a free forum for someone to repeatedly say that I am a liar about one of my most strongly held positions. Not unless he can back it up. This is his chance. He either does so, or starts addressing the substance of what I say without the name-calling.

Another county heard from on endowed chairs

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Samuel Tenenbaum (pictured above, back when he was running Columbia’s Katrina relief effort) hipped me to this editorial from over in Anderson this morning. An excerpt:

We’re puzzled by Gov. Mark Sanford’s estimation of the effectiveness of endowed chairs for research, especially considering his usually forward-thinking positions on technology and economic development.
Last week, Mr. Sanford encouraged House lawmakers to reconsider a proposal that removes the cap on lottery proceeds for the Centers of Economic Excellence program…..
Before the lottery became official in South Carolina, we questioned whether endowed chairs were the best use of funds. But it’s clear that transforming our state into one that is in the forefront of research into health care, automotives and other economic development opportunities could not have gotten this far without the financial boost from lottery proceeds.
For once, South Carolina is thinking not just about what next year might bring but what could develop in five years or 10 years or even 20 years in the future as a result of research efforts right here at home.

Frankly, I’m puzzled as to why the Anderson paper is puzzled. Maybe it’s because it labors under the mistaken impression that Mr. Sanford "usually" manifests "forward-thinking positions on technology and economic development." Where they got that, I don’t know. If he’s done that, I must have been looking somewhere else at the time. His pattern ranges from neutral to hostile when it comes to ecodevo investments. If you’ll recall, his first big move in that arena came in his first month in office, when he put the brakes on Clemson’s I-CAR program. Soon after being hit by a tsunami of outrage from Upstate leaders, he let the project go ahead. Here’s what the chair of our endowed chairs board had to say Sunday about what that project has produced:

For instance, the endowed chairs program is a central component of the Clemson International Center for Automotive Research. The recruiting of three world-renowned experts in automotive engineering has already attracted major investment from companies such as BMW, Timken, Sun Microsystems and Michelin, and — all told more than $220 million in private investment and 500 jobs in the Upstate with an average salary of $75,000.

Also, here’s what BMW had to say recently about that partnership.

Again, as I said in my column Sunday, our governor doesn’t believe, deep down, in public investment in building our economy, whether we’re talking K-12 public schools or endowed chairs. He believes all that is needed for a robust economy is the right "soil conditions," which to him largely means reduced income taxes.

Finally, why did Samuel, the head of the Energy Party’s think tank, bring this to my attention? Because Samuel is the father of endowed chairs. He came up with the idea of spending lottery funds this way, he fought to convince Gov. Jim Hodges to go along with it, and has fought ever since against short-sighted efforts in the Legislature to kill or curtail the program and spend the money on something more immediately politically appealing. Samuel also served on the endowed chairs board from its inception until Mark Sanford replaced him last year.

But while he may be a cheerleader without portfolio, he cheers just as loudly as ever, and for good reason. The endowed chairs program, his baby, offers a lot to cheer about — and will continue to do so, if it survives the likes of Mark Sanford.

Dialogue about the ‘Wireless Cloud’

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This morning, noting this post and the comments on it, Cindi sent a note to Gordon and Mike, whom she knows from past lives (Gordon was my boss when I was Cindi’s boss when she was a reporter 20 years ago; Mike Cakora was one of our "community columnists" when we had that program on the op-ed page several years back):

Good morning Gordon and Mike

I hope you’re both doing well.
I’ve just been reading over your comments on Brad’s blog, and it occurred to me that if y’all read the legislative study committee report that is the backdrop for the news release he posted, 1) you might find it interesting and 2) you might be able to help me think through this — either via e-mail or through a continued discussion on Brad’s blog, whichever you prefer.
I think the report should shed additional light on precisely what is being considered. In short, the majority report recommends hiring a consultant to further think through what to do with the ETV licenses; the minority report says this is plan is a recipe for losing a valuable state resource, which will revert to the feds if we don’t have a plan in place in less than a year.
My initial, uninformed take is to agree with the minority report, written by Rep. Dwight Loftis. By way of background, Sen. Jim Ritchie — who along with Loftis first got this conversation going in the State House a year ago — had been spinning me in advance on the importance of the state taking action. He’s a proponent of a laptop for every student, by the way, a plan I am not sold on….
I feel like this is something our editorial board needs to weigh in on at some point….
Also, since Rep. Loftis has added me to his broadband e-mail list, I have received a handful of articles on the topic that I would be happy to share with either or both of you if you’d like.

Cindi

Gordon urged me to post the report Cindi referred to on the blog so we could have a discussion here. Here’s the report.

Mike also answered as follows:

To the extent that I can contribute, I will. After my first scan of the report, I want to look at the FCC deadlines that the minority report is concerned about. I need to get clear on FCC terminology too.

Environmentally speaking, Clearwire looks to be involved with Sprint and Intel in trying to rescue WiMax according to breaking news.
http://www.informationweek.com/blog/main/archives/2008/02/sprint_clearwir_1.html

Thus Clearwire’s role as a proponent in some of the BTAs in this state is interesting. I pulled the latest lobbyist report and found that while all the usual players — Sprint Nextel, Intel, Time Warner, etc. — have lobbyists, Clearwire does not.

Mike Cakora

So if you’re hip to the highly technical issues involved, here’s your chance to jump in. Personally, I’m depending on Cindi to figure it out and help me make up my mind. This is your chance to help Cindi — and Mike and Gordon as well.

Back before I started this blog, people like Dan Gillmor told me that the Blogosphere was chock-full of people who knew more about various issues (especially technical ones) than I or any other journalist did. While that is occasionally the case, it hasn’t been as often as I’d like. This seems like a good opportunity to realize the true potential of blogging.

Sanford fails to derail progress — this time

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By BRAD WARTHEN
Editorial Page Editor
LATE WEDNESDAY, I thought I had come up with an excuse to say something encouraging about Gov. Mark Sanford.
Such opportunities come so seldom that I didn’t want this idea to get away from me. I sent a note to my colleagues to enlist their help in remembering: “Should we do some kind of attaboy on the governor using his bully pulpit for this good cause (as opposed to some of the others he is wont to push)?” I was referring to his efforts to jawbone the Legislature into meaningful reform of our DUI law.
Moments later, I read the governor’s guest column on our op-ed page about a flat tax, which was his latest attempt to slip through an income tax cut, which at times seems to be the only thing he cares about doing as governor. This chased thoughts of praise from my mind.
For the gazillionth time, he cited Tom Friedman in a way that would likely mortify the columnist and author. His “argument,” if you want to call it that: Since The World Is Flat, folks on the other side of the world are going to get ahead of us if we take a couple of hours to pull together our receipts and file a tax return. Really. “Rooting around shoeboxes of receipts” once a year was going to do us in. (And never mind the fact that most paperwork is done on the federal return, with the state return piggybacking on that.)
Then, he argued that his plan for cutting the income tax (which was his point, not avoiding the onerous filing) was necessary to offset a proposed cigarette tax increase. The alternative would be “to grow government,” which is how he describes using revenue to get a three-to-one federal match to provide health care for some of our uninsured citizens.
Here in the real world, folks want to raise our lowest-in-the-nation cigarette tax to price the coffin nails beyond the means of teenagers. Everybody who has in any way participated in conversations at the State House about the issue over the last several years knows this. Yet the governor of our state, who seems only to have conversations with himself, can ask this about raising that tax: “(W)hat for, more government or a lower-tax option?” In his narrowly limited version of reality, those are the only considerations.
But enough about that essay from an alternative dimension. What I read on the front page the next morning drove it from my mind: “Sanford: ‘Endowed chairs’ a failure.” It was about his latest attack on one of the few really smart, strategic moves this state has made in the past decade.
It’s the one good thing to come out of Gov. Jim Hodges’ execrable state lottery. (I used to struggle to come up with good things to say about him, too, but this was one such thing.) The scholarships? We were doing that without the lottery, and would have expanded them without the lottery except Gov. Hodges vetoed that bill (because he wanted a lottery).
But a small chunk of the new “chump tax” was set aside to provide seed money to attract some of the best and brightest minds to South Carolina, and put them to work building our economy. Gov. Sanford has never liked this idea, because he doesn’t like the state to invest in the future in any appreciable way apart from land conservation (which is a fine idea, but hardly a shot in the arm to the economy). He believes we don’t need to invest more in education, or research, or even our Department of Commerce, which he takes such pride in having trimmed. His entire “economic development” plan is to cut the income tax. This attracts folks who have already made their pile and are looking for a tax haven in which to hide it, and makes him a hero to the only political entity in the nation that sees him as a hot property: the Club for Growth, whose president showed just how out of touch that group is with even the Republican portion of the electorate by suggesting John McCain pick Mr. Sanford as his running mate.
The thing that made this outburst from the governor particularly galling is that on Wednesday, I had met Jay Moskowitz, the new head of Health Sciences South Carolina — a consortium of universities and hospitals teaming together to make our state healthier, both physically and economically.
Dr. Moskowitz is the former deputy director of the National Institutes of Health, and most recently held a stack of impressive titles at Penn State, including “chief scientific officer.” He made it clear that he would not be here if not for the endowed chairs program. Nor would others. He spoke of the top people he’s recruited in his few months here, who have in turn recruited others, an example of the “cascade of people that are going to be recruited with each of these chairs.”
These folks aren’t just coming to buy a few T-shirts at the beach and leave. They’re here to make their home, and to build their new home into the kind of place that will attract other creative minds. The endowed chairs program is the principal factor that convinces them to pull up stakes and make the effort. “I had a wonderful job in Pennsylvania,” said Dr. Moskowitz, and he wouldn’t have left it without believing that South Carolina was committed to moving forward on a broad research front.
He doesn’t say it this way, but it’s obvious he wouldn’t have come if he had thought Mark Sanford’s “leave it alone” approach was typical of our state’s leadership.
Fortunately, it is not. The S.C. House, led by Speaker Bobby Harrell, rose up in response to the governor’s naysaying and voted unanimously to extend the endowed chairs program.
This is a moment of high irony for me. For 17 years I’ve pushed to give more power to South Carolina’s governor because our state so badly needed visionary leadership, and I thought there was little reason to expect it would come from our Legislature.
But on Thursday, it did. And if the Senate has the wisdom to follow suit, your children and my grandchildren will have reason to be grateful.

Here’s a place to talk about the school shootings

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Whenever I see regulars commenting on something in the news on a post regarding a different subject, as Herb did here:

Does anyone know what to do about the continued massacre of citizens in public places in this country? The kids that were killed yesterday–they were my kids. Oh, not literally, but every time it happens, I see my own kids, and in a real way, we are all in this together.

I suppose some people will want to arm more people with weapons to fire back as soon as the guy starts shooting, and others will want to blame socialism for the guy’s maladjustment to begin with, but I’d like to know about some workable solutions, besides turning our society into the set of a Grade B Cowboy movie (everybody armed with pistols). Can anyone help? Who is going to stop the next guy who is mad at the world from killing another dozen people? And the next kids may very well be my own.

Posted by: Herb Brasher | Feb 15, 2008 12:06:54 PM

… I realized I may have been remiss in my duty, not having posted on a subject of high interest to readers.

So consider this post an opportunity to discuss the shootings in Illinois yesterday, and other such events.

S.C. Hospital Association on quality of care and safety, covering the uninsured

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Here I must apologize for falling behind reporting on the meetings we have with folks pushing various points of view. It was one of the reasons I started this blog, but pulling my notes, video and all together to fairly summarize such meetings is very time-consuming. Yesterday, I had two very interesting such meetings — one with Jay Moskowitz, president of Health Sciences South Carolina in Columbia, who is an example of the kind of classy talent our governor would prefer that we NOT attract; another with some guys from the Air Force on a host of issues from the strategic to the logistical (so wide-ranging that I can’t summarize it just in passing). Unfortunately, yesterday was so busy I didn’t get to digesting those, and probably won’t today or tomorrow.

But I will keep the backlog from stacking up any higher by telling you about a meeting we had today:

Thornton Kirby — pictured above — president and CEO of the S.C. Hospital Association, came in to talk to us about two issues:

The hospitals’ initiative on health care quality and safety, and
The plan the association is helping to back to cover the uninsured in our state.

For the sake of brevity, I’ll just give you these two video clips below, roughly covering those two subjects, and give you the two links above.

I do have some views on the matters discussed — such as my own personal view (not to be confused with the editorial board’s position, certain people would prefer for me to make absolutely clear, as if the disclaimer at the top of my main page weren’t enough) that the bigger problem in this country isn’t the one-in-seven uninsured, but the vast majority who increasingly have trouble affording the privilege of being insured.

But in Mr. Kirby’s behalf, I will cede his excellent point that my sort of comprehensive solutions can only be implemented nationally, leaving the states to do what little they can. (Which is why I was happy to see what Joel Lourie has been trying to do, just to mention something I meant to say earlier.)

Stories that tell why we need single-payer

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We continue to concentrate on the wrong thing — getting the uninsured into the present system — when we talk about health care reform.

Increasingly, those of us who are privileged to be in the system find that we can’t afford health care, either. The whole system is rotten, wasteful, too expensive and too inefficient. We pay more money to be sicker than folks in any other advanced nation.

There are a lot of problems with our system, but the biggest is the basic premise — employer-based health care through for-profit (and we’re talking for HUGE profits) private insurance companies.

If private health care coverage weren’t so expensive for all of us, the 1 in 7 who remain uncovered would be in it. But it is, and will be, expensive by definition. A profit has to be made.

A single-payer system is the logical way to go. It’s time we got logical about this monster that is now consuming 16 percent of our national economy.

I wrote this column — "‘Health care reform?’ Hush! You’ll anger the Insurance Gods!" — back in November because it’s time that people like me — in the top income quintile — started pointing out how unaffordable this wasteful system is for us, which means it’s worse for millions of others who are also in the system. An excerpt from that column:

… I make more money than most people do here in the wealthiest country in the history of the world, and I live paycheck to paycheck, in large part because of the cost of being an extremely allergic asthmatic, and needing to do what it takes to keep enough oxygen pumping to my brain to enable me to work so I can keep paying my premiums and copays. My premiums in the coming year — we’re going to a new plan — will be $274.42 on every biweekly check, not counting dental or vision care. And I’m lucky to have it. I know that, compared to most, I’ve got a sweet deal!
I’m in the top income quintile in the U.S. population, and we can’t afford cable TV, we’ve never taken a European vacation or done anything crazy like that, we haven’t bought a new car since 1986, and aside from the 401(k) I can’t touch until I retire (if I can ever afford to retire), we have no savings.
Yet I will pay my $274.42 gladly, and I will thank the one true God in whom I actually do believe that I have that insurance, and that I am in an upper-income bracket so that I can just barely pay those premiums, and that neither my wife (a cancer survivor) nor I nor either of the two children (out of five) the gods still let me cover is nearly as unhealthy as the people I see whenever I visit a hospital…

On Jan. 6, we ran an op-ed piece from B.J. Welborn that told another middle-class story. An excerpt:

But the picture is not always rosy. A recent experience made me realize that although I have a comfortable income and a good education, pay taxes and have an insurer pick up most of my health care costs, an overburdened and undermonitored health care system can leave me vulnerable and scared. Here’s my latest scare:
Last year, an out-of-state company bought my husband’s firm in Columbia. We were forced to change our insurance. This change required baffling paperwork to keep my Gleevec coming, and though we tried valiantly to figure out the process, different people at the insurance company told us different things. The process dragged out; the clock was ticking for me. Soon, three weeks passed without my lifesaving drug. I wondered if anybody cared.
I checked with my pharmacy and found it couldn’t order Gleevec from its supplier. I searched for Gleevec at other pharmacies. This drug, still in clinical trials, isn’t like a common antibiotic kept on drugstore shelves. I couldn’t find it. And even if I could find Gleevec, how would I pay for it? $3,000 this month, then $3,000 the next month?
My anxiety mounted. When I washed my face, small blemishes bled, as they do when your blood can’t do its job. I was slipping through the cracks, and I was cracking up…
The "what if" game is terrible. Millions play it, and one day, you or a
loved one could too. Anyone can get a chronic disease — diabetes, stroke,
mental illness, heart disease or cancer.
Let’s face it: You, too, could slip through the cracks of our health care
system. So, it is up to you to make our potential leaders aware of what’s
really going on. It’s not just the poor and uninsured who are hurting, it’s
also millions of hard-working, middle-class Americans who foot the bill for
others’ health care…

Then, on Friday, Feb. 1, we had this letter to the editor:

Health coverage could make writer sick
I am absolutely disgusted by the state of our nation’s health care.
I am a college-educated woman with a bachelor’s degree, an employee of a prestigious university, but most important, a wife and a mother of young children.
I live in fear that one of my family members will become seriously ill or simply require regular preventative care that my health insurance does not cover.
For example, last year, I discovered that the health insurance for S.C. state employees does not cover routine pelvic exams, and without health insurance, that type of procedure can cost almost $200. And other medical procedures aren’t covered until after I meet the $350-per-person deductible.
With one child in daycare and the costs of my children’s health care and regular childhood illnesses, I simply can’t afford to pay $200 or $350 or $550 for my own care. So I don’t go. And I hope that I don’t get sick.

MARTHA BROWN
Columbia

That letter prompted this one on today’s page:

Health insurance costs leave little for care
I read the letter “Health care coverage could make writer sick” by Martha Brown with interest.
While wholly sympathetic to her concerns, I feel, by comparison to many of us, she would be embarrassed by how good she has it.
As a provider for a healthy and active family of four, I am shackled with a monthly insurance bill in excess of $800. For this, we are provided with a policy that covers only 80 percent after a $1,000 deductible per person. It would appear that our policy was written to provide for the economic health of our insurance company, rather than that of my family.
Our provider enjoys strong local recognition, and I hope it is competitive with other carriers, but my bill has become a payment for asset protection rather than health care, and I’m not sure how well it provides for that.
“Health care is expensive” is the most common explanation received when I question our agent, doctors and others about our situation, but price is irrelevant when, after insurance payments, no money is left over for health care.
Surely, mine and Ms. Brown’s situation is not unique. We live in the greatest society that has yet existed, but our current profit-driven health care system is clearly in direct conflict with what is best for its citizens.

EDGAR PUTNAM
Columbia

More people should come forward with these stories. It’s embarrassing — neither of my two bosses, my employer or my wife, was particularly crazy about me going into such details — but this stuff needs to be available as we debate these issues. And we must debate them — the status quo is not sustainable.

Obama: ‘Those old categories don’t work’

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Further continuing the conversation that we continued here…

As you know, I’ve challenged the facile use of the word "conservative." My point is, you can’t just say "I’m conservative" or "he’s not conservative" and have it mean anything. You have to explain, conservative how — in what way? Because alone, the word has had the meaning leached out of it.

Similarly, the word "liberal." This is an excellent video clip of Barack Obama fielding questions about having been judged the Senate’s "most liberal" member. He does a pretty fair job of deconstructing the term, and then goes on to the more important point: "This is the old politics. This is the stuff that we’re trying to get rid of."

He is speaking to… what? … the real split in American politics, between the old-style partisan warriors that we swing voters long ago got sick of, and those who would lead a different kind of pragmatic, results-oriented discussion of issues.

Clinton_2008_wart2

Scarred fighter vs. Something new

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Can’t seem to get off the theme of my Sunday column. The WashPost has a story today leading with the very same dichotomy between the two Democratic presidential candidates:

Democratic presidential hopeful Barack Obama offered himself as "something new" at a pair of spirited, arena-size rallies in Maryland yesterday, while his primary rival, Hillary Clinton, portrayed herself as a "battle-scarred" fighter for the middle class at more intimate events held across the region on the eve of today’s primaries.

Maybe it’s new to the folks in the "Potomac Primary" region. It certainly sums them up — the scarred fighter of the bitter partisan wars vs. someone who would lead us beyond all that. As the WashPost notes in another story today, this is indeed an opportunity for voters to "influence one of the closest presidential nominating fights in memory."

And yet, while the contest may be close, the candidates couldn’t be farther apart on this central difference between them — a new beginning on one hand, more of the same on the other.

Clinton_2008_wartback

‘Ideas Matter,’ and other stuff

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Sorry I haven’t had time to post anything new today. As I prepared to do so, I read over the responses to my Sunday column and thought it was a conversation — or perhaps I should say, several conversations — worth continuing. There is much I could add by way of explanation to what I was saying in the Sunday piece — so much that I hardly know where to start.

Fortunately, your comments give me several starting points. So let’s address a few of these questions that go to the heart of the UnParty and what it’s all about:

Doug Ross: So when McCain rails against Democrats and Hillary Clinton/Barack Obama in the coming months (as he has already done repeatedly in the Republican debates), we can expect you to pull your endorsement?
Me: No, of course not. We’ve endorsed both McCain and Obama. If they are both the nominees, we expect each to compete strongly, each trying to convince us that he’s better than the other guy. This will be a great thing for the country, as it would be a choice between good and better, rather that the usual "bad or worse" choice that the parties give us.
If Hillary Clinton is the nominee, even less so. I would expect almost every day of that campaign would make me gladder and gladder that we endorsed McCain.

dave faust: Ideas matter.
And as long as there are competing ideas that can’t really co-exist with one another if implemented, there will be the ‘dreaded scourge’ of partisanship (which I happen to think is a good thing)… I agree with you that it’s sad that american politics have degenerated into the name-calling us/them mess it is today, but at the heart of it all is an elemental debate about ideas that are often mutually exclusive….
Me: Yes, absolutely! Ideas matter! That’s why parties are such a destructive force. The two political parties are coagulations of ideas and impulses that have little to do with each other. They are not coherent. People who think war is never the answer make common cause with, say, people who think partial-birth abortions should be federally funded EVEN THOUGH THOSE IDEAS HAVE NOTHING TO DO WITH EACH OTHER. Meanwhile, folks who despise ‘amnesty’ in immigration and want less permeable borders form common cause with people who believe there must never be a new tax for any reason at any time — again, EVEN THOUGH THOSE IDEAS HAVE NOTHING TO DO WITH EACH OTHER (and can even directly conflict, as when you have to grow government to shut down your border).
Now that’s fine that these people want to associate freely, and form alliances for the purposes of getting candidates elected. The problem is when these alliances cease to be ad hoc — when the alliance itself becomes the overriding thing. Then, the IDEAS are ill-served. The parties, by demanding orthodoxy and loyalty, encourage adherents to be intellectually dishonest. If the anti-war person hears a good idea for ending war from someone who wants to strengthen borders, THEY should form an alliance for the purpose of getting that goal done. (We have seen this among Ron Paul supporters, but because he IS iconoclastic, he never had a prayer of getting the party’s nomination.) The anti-war person shouldn’t be held back because securing borders is seen as "conservative," or "a Republican idea."
Think about it: Both liberals who want to raise wages and improve working conditions, and conservatives who want… to put it the way they would, "want to enforce the law," or protect their culture, or whatever … could probably have shut down the borders a while back, but party boundaries have prevented them from thinking of working together.
Alliances that should be provisional and ad hoc — such as a tax-hater joining with a moral authoritarian — and formed around specific bills or proposals become something bigger than the ideas.
So it is that when McCain and the others in the Gang of 14 make a deal that results in seating conservative judges who would otherwise have been held up, GOP "conservatives" hate McCain because he worked with Democrats to do it! And so forth…

weldon VII: So, Brad, instead of the Left fighting the Right, you see the parties fighting the Unparty as the meaningful struggle?
Pot, meet kettle.
Me: I offer the alternative, and get caught in the crossfire, because Left and Right don’t want there to be an alternative. So that leads me to conclude that the real split is between the left and right orthodoxies on the one hand, and those of us who want to chuck their whole silly game on the other. Hence my column. Hell, I don’t want to fight. But I’m certainly not going to sit still for their foolishness.

Richard L. Wolfe: I wonder if those in the press who so gleefully backed McCain will stay the course if young Obama is the opponent?
Me: Yes. Absolutely. We will "stay the course" of liking both, and may the better of two fine candidates win! What’s so hard to understand about this? I’ll tell you — your thinking is canalized to the point that you simply can’t understand the simple fact that a reasonable person could like both of these guys. You think it has to be either-or, but it doesn’t. Sure, only one can be president, but you don’t have to dislike one to like the other.

bud: As I’ve said on a number of occasions I don’t find partisanship necessarily a bad thing. We’re all partisan for the causes we support. And that includes Brad, whose brand of big-government partisanship is just as strident as those of us on either the left or right. So rather than fight it, let’s embrace our nation as one of partisans.
Me: bud has always had trouble understanding what I’m talking about when I decry partisanship. Read what I said to dave above. People should fight for an idea. What they should NOT fight for is a TEAM that may agree with them on one issue, but not on a host of others. A person who truly THINKS about ideas will agree with Democrats on some things, and with Republicans on others. It’s when you choose sides and stick to it that ideas start to be undermined.

H.M. Murdock: The Gingrich-led Republicans started the current rift in American politics during the early 90’s, as the GOP repeatedly attempted to embarrass or demean the Clintons over issues that had nothing to do with public policy or running the country–Nannygate, Travelgate, Whitewater, Jennifer Flowers, Vince Foster, Monica, etc.
The public still is paying the price for the GOP’s scorched earth policy against the Clintons and the Dems. Swiftboating now is expected, tolerated, and even admired by some kooks who would rather win a political argument than advance the best interests of the country.
Me: You’re missing the fact that to Republicans, Democrats started all the "-gate" stuff, with "Water-" and "Iran-". So they wanted to get the Dems back for those. And once again, this is the problem with parties. There’s no reason that a person outraged over Watergate wouldn’t also be outraged over Whitewater. Nor should a political label require you to be outraged over any two of the things that your party has taken on as a cause. As for "Swiftboating" — I need to do a separate post on that. It’s come to be freighted with meaning among Democrats that I’m not sure the invented verb sustains well.

bud: I’m going to step outside the subject area to relate a story about the free-market and how unscrupulous businesses can be….
Me: Thanks, bud. You’re making my point for me. I’m always saying that my own experience causes me to have no more faith in large private organizations than in government. This is why I argue so vehemently with the people who think the public sector is always inefficient, bureaucratic and wasteful and that the private sector is always better. Life experiences don’t bear this out. People just know more about the public stupidities and waste because they’re public. When I express ideas based on these life experiences, bud calls me a "big government guy." Truth is, I just don’t see that the private sector is better, and therefore I’m not dismissive of the government trying to address problems.

I realize those answers may be too stream-of-consciousness to make complete sense, but I wanted to hold up my end of the conversation, and only had minutes to do so. Gotta run. I’m sure we’ll revisit all these topics.

Club for Growth to McCain: Do our bidding

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Finally, I have a moment to blog, and so I will now share with you the WSJ opinion piece that three people have pointed out to me today.

The Club for Growth, shocked that neither of the two remaining Republican candidates is the sort who will do their bidding, completely misses the point that, contrary to its own mythology, it is badly out of step with the Republican electorate. That means its last refuge is gone, just as it was prepared to take over the world. Nasty things, reversals.

Therefor the Club’s advice to the man who is getting nominated without it is that he simply must do its bidding in the matter of choosing a running mate. To wit, as set out by Club President Pat Toomey:

While congratulations are still premature, with Mitt
Romney dropping out of the race yesterday it is now very likely that
the Republican Party will nominate Sen. John McCain for president. If
that happens, the GOP will, for the first time since 1976, select a
candidate at odds with a large portion of its conservative members to
be the standard bearer. At the same time, the party is more estranged
from independent swing voters than it has been for decades.
This will pose a twin challenge for Mr. McCain. To
meet it, he will have to become the champion of the brand of economic
conservatism that has won national elections for Republicans since 1980…

To which I say, how come? He got past the hurdle that theoretically requires your favor without you. Your views don’t amount to diddly among the independents he has to win now. Sure, the really emotional types who are ticked over the existence of Mexican In Our Midst might stay home and give it to Hillary out of pique. But those fellas have nothing to lose. You are men of business. You may be crazy (politically speaking), but you’re not stupid. Are you?

Anyway, here’s where it really gets wild. Here is also where we find out why the economic libertarian extremists from Wall Street and other foreign parts have devoted so much of their ready cash to South Carolina politics. Obviously, this is the basket that holds 40 percent of their eggs. They have five veep suggestions to make, and two of them are South Carolinians: Mark Sanford and Jim DeMint.

Really. John McCain just wrapped up the nomination his way, with the support of such truly conservative South Carolinians as Bobby Harrell and Henry McMaster, and the Club says he should pick either the state’s most prominent advocate of Mitt Romney, who just proved his lack of appeal; or the guy who is such a nonteam-player, such an anti-team player, that he couldn’t be bothered to back anybody for president. A guy who is so obviously for nobody can expect nobody to be grateful enough to him to ask him to come along for the ride. Why would a candidate think he’d be helped by a guy who couldn’t be bothered to pick up an oar when it counted? Principled disagreement, a la DeMint, a ticket-balancing nominee might go for. But a guy who’s for no one but himself? Fuggedaboudit.

But why go for either of them when there’s an actually attractive candidate out there with vote-getting ability? Enter Mike Huckabee. But that doesn’t suit Mr. Toomey:

Moving forward, Mr. Huckabee on the ticket would be a disaster. The former governor has a record of raising taxes and increasing spending. Picking him would only make it more likely that conservatives will sit on their hands come November.

What could these fellas have against ol’ Huck? Could it be that he goes all over the country calling them the "Club for Greed"? Could it be that folks who don’t vote for McCain keep voting for the guy who calls them the — let’s say it again — "Club for Greed" (there’s video on this link)?, who says theirs is "a sleazy way to do politics"?

"Fortunately," breathes Mr. Toomey with relief, "there is no shortage of true-blue fiscal conservatives in the GOP" — meaning "guys like us," for the Club is one of those outfits out there that defines "conservative" as "guys who are true-blue to us."

But obviously, "conservatives" by this definition are indeed quite scarce. Out of 49 states, they can only come up with three. The other two they dig up from a state in which McCain and Huckabee won 63 percent of the Republican vote, and the only guy that either of the two guys they dug up supported got 15 percent.

Oh, heck yeah — that’s a BIG help. Thanks but no thanks, Club for Gree-, I mean "Growth."

Republicans for Hillary

34 Replies

As you know, I keep struggling with the terminology used to describe those Republicans who keep wanting to strike out at and pull down the man who quite obviously is going to be their party’s nominee, whatever they say or do.

"Conservative" is wholly inadequate for various reasons previously cited, and I’ll add another one here: No "conservative" would do something so reckless and destructive to his own cause. If a "conservative" would do that, the word means nothing at all. Actual conservatives are putting out releases such as this one, which I received this morning (the headline, in case you’re too lazy to click on the link, is "Reaganauts for McCain").

So let’s try this one on: "Republicans for Hillary." This fits in various ways:

Only those who want a Democrat to win the election would keep driving a wedge into their own party.
Only those who want a Democrat to win the election would do anything to try to delay or prevent the nomination of the only candidate with the independent appeal that is absolutely necessary for them to either Democratic nominee.
While Barack Obama could compete with John McCain among those same independents (and folks, we swing voters are the ones who decide elections), Sen. Clinton is far less likely to be able to do so. She alienates such voters. Therefor, if she is the nominee, she would love it if these alleged "conservatives" managed to pull off a miracle for Mitt Romney. But since that isn’t going to happen now, she depends on them to weaken McCain as much as they can — something they seem eager to do.
These folks are the natural GOP counterparts to the kind of Democrats who support Sen. Clinton — those who relish polarization and pointless partisan bickering, and put them above all things, certainly above the good of the nation.

Of course, if I get my way on the Democratic side, Sen. Clinton won’t be the nominee. But I don’t think "Republicans for Obama" fits these people; I don’t think they’d be as comfortable backing someone so post-partisan as he. It’s McCain’s very cross-party appeal that they hate about him; it seems unlikely they’d like it any better in Obama.

So "Republicans for Hillary" it is.

Another overused (and ill-defined) word: ‘Conservative’

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Having switched to PBS, where apparently they have a larger vocabulary, I’m not hearing "presumptive" so much, so that’s good.

What I am hearing to an absurd degree is the term "conservative," and always used either with no defining context, or with a contradictory context.

For instance — one of the talking heads was going on about how McCain had not yet been declared the winner of his home state some 90 minutes after polls closed (the irony was that McCain was declared the winner while this guy was talking), and saying that exit polls indicated it was because of self-described "conservative" voters.

And what do they mean by "conservative?" Well, apparently no one thought to ask them — which I would certainly do before turning around and reporting that they were conservative, because the word seems to be so malleable and subjective these days.

Anyway, we were told that Mitt Romney was leading among people who wanted to deport all the illegal aliens. Of course, those people are not conservatives — conservatives are sensible folk who don’t entertain fantasies — so that was apparently an unrelated phenomenon.

Then they spoke of voters who were opposed to abortion. OK, I thought, now we’re getting somewhere…. except that these voters were going, NOT for the senator who’s been strongly pro-life his entire public life, but for the ex-governor of Taxachusetts whose position on abortion depends upon what office he’s running for at a given moment. What on Earth is with these people?

Basically, I think newsfolk — so many of them being self-reported "liberals," whatever they mean by that — tend to be very gullible and just take people at their word when they say they’re "conservatives," sort of the way they tend to lump people into the realm of the unintelligible if they happen to be evangelicals (hence their constant surprise whenever Mike Huckabee gets a few votes).

Taking Mr. Retske’s ‘Conservatism’ test

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Yesterday, one of the first comments on my "Give me that old-time conservatism" column post was from Gene Retske, who proposed the following:

Brad, c’mon, do you really believe that you are a conservative? Do you think that Roe v Wade was improperly decided? Do you think Ronald Reagan was the greatest president of the 20th Century? Do you think America is the model for the world, and is obligated to spread democracy? Do you think America is a country founded on Judeo-Christian principles? Would you leave your wife for Ann Coulter?

If you can’t answer "yes" to all these questions, you may not be a true conservative.

John McCain believes in Duty, Honor and Country, for sure. That these basic criteria are touted as presidential qualities shows how far down we have come. There are over 12 million current and former military who also have these qualities, and are thus more qualified than Hillary or Obama to be president.

Sorry, Brad, you can’t redefine conservatism to your standards, nor can John McCain.

Hey, I’m good at tests! So here we go:

Brad, c’mon, do you really believe that you are a conservative? No. I utterly reject both the "conservative" and "liberal" labels, because the popular, current definitions of those terms describe world views that each contain much that is repugnant to me. One of the main reasons I do this site is to have at least one place in the blogosphere that provides an alternative to the perpetual extreme-left vs. extreme-right argument that tends to predominate in this medium. Traditionally, however, there is much (or perhaps I should say, was much) in both conservatism and liberalism that I see as being of value. The last part of my column Sunday was an evocation of what I see as good in conservatism. As for liberalism — well, there used to be much good in that, too, but it really started to degenerate starting about 1968.
Do you think that Roe v Wade was improperly decided? Yes, absolutely. In fact, you don’t state it nearly strongly enough. It was disastrous, on many levels. First, there is the obvious — more abortions. But then it’s not the job of the Court to decide cases in terms of outcomes (a point on which the admirers of Roe would disagree). Therefore in answer to whether it was "improperly decided" I’ll say this: The ruling was based on a bogus proposition — that the Constitution guarantees a "right to privacy." It does no such thing. (I’ve always been struck by the way the presumption was said to arise from a "penumbra" — suggestive to me of the Shadow of Death.) Finally, I’ll say — and once again, this is irrelevant to whether it was properly decided, but I think it speaks to where you intended to go with this — that this disaster of a ruling is probably more to blame than any other one cause for the nasty polarization of our politics. This country would be a better place in many ways without Roe.
Do you think Ronald Reagan was the greatest president of the 20th Century? Absolutely not. While I don’t dislike him today as much as I did at the time, I think he did much to ruin the sort of conservatism that I have always valued — in particular, he helped instill the imprudent notion that we can have all the blessings of good government (and folks, there’s no such thing as private property — to cite one such "blessing" — without a sound system affirming, protecting and supporting it) without paying for it. The grossly immature Gimme-Gimme wing exemplified by the likes of Grover Norquist is a product of the Reagan era. As for defeating communism — I give him credit for doing his part, as had every president of either party since Truman — and he had the honor to have the watch when it all came tumbling down. If he provided the final push needed to reach the tipping point — which seems to be the consensus, although I have no idea how to measure such things — hurrah for him. He certainly demonstrated resolve — such as the resolve to spend the Soviets under the table. To the extent that’s what did it, hoorah again. But was that "conservative?" Oh, and if you want to talk about "amnesty" for illegals (which I don’t, but a lot of folks who call themselves "conservatives" do) — Reagan went for it; McCain does not. (Let me point out that Sen. McCain, unlike Ronald Reagan and Mitt Romney, has been opposed to abortion his entire career.)
Do you think America is the model for the world, and is obligated to spread democracy? Yep, in many ways (although obviously we’re a poor model on health care). That’s why I’m an unreconstructed interventionist — but then, so were liberals before 1968. In fact, as I’ve often said, the invasion of Iraq was the most liberal thing that George W. Bush ever did — which is probably why he botched the aftermath. Like most conservatives, he doesn’t believe in nation-building. Like liberals of the endangered JFK stripe, I do. I’m assuming you meant to go in that direction. Or perhaps you’re speaking of the "city on a hill" notion of American exceptionalism? I’m for that, too. But again, there’s nothing conservative about that. To the extent that we are a beacon for the world, it’s based on liberal principles — in the sense of advancing liberal democracy. But then, I’m using terminology that has little to do with the post-Reagan definitions of "liberal" and "conservative" in our domestic politics (although, I’m happy to say, the term is still current in an international context).
Do you think America is a country founded on Judeo-Christian principles? I believe it was founded by people whose culture was informed by Judeo-Christian principles, such "freethinkers" as Thomas Paine aside. If it helps you any, I’m much more an admirer of John Adams (he who wrote, "Our Constitution was made only for a religious and moral people. It is wholly inadequate for the government of any other.") than Thomas Jefferson, although Jefferson probably had a greater impact on the development of the country’s self-concept, which is a shame.
Would you leave your wife for Ann Coulter? Certainly not! Nor would I leave her for French Socialist leader Ségolène Royal, who is a LOT more attractive. I would cross a continent to avoid either Ann Coulter or Paul Krugman, either Rush Limbaugh or Frank Rich, or any of those who delight in tearing this country apart. My support for both John McCain and Barack Obama is based in the same principles that cause me to utterly reject the Coulters and Krugmans of the world.

I’ll have to leave it to Mr. Retske to score this. Since it was an essay test (my favorite kind, much better than multiple guess), and since he’s the "teacher" in this instance, I guess he’ll assign whatever values (in every sense) he chooses to each question.

But if I flunk, fine by me. See my answer to question 1.

Give me that old-time conservatism

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My regular readers will recognize this column as having been adapted from a post from late last week. Sorry to be repetitive, but increasingly (and conveniently) I find blog posts to be adaptable into columns. I’ve developed it a bit — cutting some here, adding some there (particularly, a new ending, and therefor a new point). But the inspiration was the same.

Aside from making my seven-day week a little more manageable, adapting a column such as this one at least exposes it to a slightly more friendly audience. The Blogosphere is more densely populated with the kinds of people who would take exception to the ideas expressed herein. I find that the newspaper’s readership contains more folks who harbor my notion of the best sort of conservatism. Every once in a while, even I would like to get a little encouragement, you know. Speaking of which, thank you, Chief Warrant Officer Libbon. It was good to get your message before the mob started screaming.

By BRAD WARTHEN
EDITORIAL PAGE EDITOR
THE IDEOLOGUES in the Republican Party — you know, the ones who don’t care who can actually become president, as long as their candidate thinks exactly the way they do about everything — don’t know whether to spit or go blind with John McCain as their presumptive nominee.
And I gotta tell ya, I’m loving it. My happiness will be complete once the “anger” faction of the Democratic Party is similarly discombobulated by having Barack Obama as its nominee. But let’s not get ahead of ourselves on that.
My other favorite candidate, John McCain (The State has endorsed both him and Sen. Obama), may not quite have the Republican nomination sewn up, but he’s close enough to it to give the more objectionable elements within his party considerable indigestion. True, Mitt Romney is doing everything he possibly can to stop the McCain bandwagon, spending $1 million on ads in California alone.
But while this moment of promise lasts, let’s savor it.
A colleague who listens to such things says right-wing talk radio is abuzz with apocalyptic rantings about the End Times for the GOP, which sounds lovely to me, UnParty adherent that I am. But I content myself with reading about it in the papers. Let’s take just one day (Thursday) of one newspaper (The Wall Street Journal) widely associated with Conservative Orthodoxy. Under the headline, “McCain Takes the GOP Lead,” we read:

Republicans have a clear front-runner in Arizona Sen. John McCain. By nearly all accounts, he is the candidate many Democrats least want to face, the one who would best remake his party’s battered image and draw independent voters needed to win in November.
But Sen. McCain still confronts a problem both in the remainder of the nomination race, and, if he wins, in the fall: He is simply loathed by many fellow Republicans, often for the very bipartisanship and maverick streak that attracts independents.

Under “Giuliani Fund-Raisers Sit on Fence for Now,” we learn that while Rudy Giuliani may have pulled out…

Mr. Giuliani’s well-heeled supporters might not throw their money behind the cash-strapped Arizona senator so fast. “We haven’t decided what we’re going to do,” says T. Boone Pickens, the Dallas tycoon who has raised more than $1 million for Mr. Giuliani, the former New York City mayor, since late 2006…

Then, on the opinion pages, that font of oracular conservative wisdom, the very lead editorial of the hallowed WSJ itself, under the real-life headline “McCain’s Apostasies,” pronounces the following:

Mr. McCain’s great political strength has also long been his main weakness, which is that his political convictions are more personal than ideological. He believes in duty, honor and country more than he does in any specific ideas.
These personal qualities are genuine political assets…. But he is now on the cusp of leading a coalition that also believes in certain principles, and its “footsoldiers” (to borrow a favorite McCain word) need to be convinced that the Senator is enough on their side to warrant enthusiastic support…

By “ideas,” the Journal does not mean “removing the inordinate influence of money from politics,” or “restraining wasteful spending” or “believing the surge would work” or “life begins at conception” or “maybe we should secure our borders without totally alienating the Hispanic vote.” No, it means such lofty concepts as: “What do you always, always do with a tax? Cut it!”
Duty, honor and country indeed! What’s conservative about that stuff?
Speaking of the Gimme-Gimme wing of the party, another newspaper (conservatives should cover their sensitive ears before I name it), The New York Times, reported on Friday that “leaders of the right” have practically been doing backflips trying to adjust to the new reality. My favorite in this regard is Grover “Shrink Government Until You Can Drown it in a Bathtub” Norquist, who goes further than anyone to spin this into a personal victory:
“He has moved in the right direction strongly and forcefully on taxes,” Mr. Norquist says, adding that he’s been talking to Sen. McCain’s “tax guys” for some time. So you see, not only does this make everything OK, but Grover gets to take credit! Because, as anyone who has ever had cause to regret signing his “No New Taxes” pledge can testify, it’s all about Grover.
By now some of you think I have it in for all things “conservative.” I don’t. I just grew up with a different concept of it from that which has in recent years been appropriated by extremists. I grew up in a conservative family — a Navy family, as a matter of fact. To the extent that “conservative ideas” were instilled in me, they weren’t the kind that make a person fume over paying his taxes, or get apoplectic at the sound of spoken Spanish. They were instead the old-fashioned ones: Traditional moral values. Respect for others. Good stewardship. Plain speaking.
And finally, the concept that no passing fancy, no merely political idea, is worth as much as Duty, Honor and Country.

To learn more about the UnParty, go to http://blogs.thestate.com/bradwarthensblog/.

Ideologues try to come to grips with McCain’s ‘weakness’

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The poor ideologues in the Republican Party — you know, the ones who don’t give a damn who can actually become president, as long as their candidate thinks exactly the way they do about everything — don’t know whether to spit or go blind with John McCain as their presumptive nominee. And I gotta tell ya, I’m loving it. My happiness will be complete once the ANGER faction of the Democratic party is similarly discombobulated by having Barack Obama as their nominee.

Anyway, to see what I’m saying, read The Wall Street Journal. In today’s paper alone, you can read this story:

For the first time in a presidential campaign already a year old, Republicans have a clear front-runner in Arizona Sen. John McCain. By nearly all accounts, he is the candidate many Democrats least want to face, the one who would best remake his party’s battered image and draw independent voters needed to win in November.

But Sen. McCain still confronts a problem both in the remainder of the nomination race, and, if he wins, in the fall: He is simply loathed by many fellow Republicans, often for the very bipartisanship and maverick streak that attracts independents. His biggest, and perhaps final, test comes Tuesday, when 21 states hold contests — most of them open only to Republican voters….

Then there’s this piece, which observes:

All eyes were on Mr. McCain, who after winning three contests in the pivotal states of New Hampshire, South Carolina and Florida, is now considered the front-runner. He took his time in the spotlight to blast Wall Street. "There’s some greedy people on Wall Street that perhaps need to be punished," Mr. McCain said in response to a question about how to help people keep their homes and avoid foreclosure.

The emphasis is mine. That’s gotta hurt, if you’re a WSJ kind of guy, coming from the likely GOP nominee. Then there’s this piece about all the big-money guys who just don’t know what to do now:

Rudy Giuliani, the onetime Republican presidential front-runner, retreated from the race and backed John McCain. But Mr. Giuliani’s well-heeled supporters might not throw their money behind the cash-strapped Arizona senator so fast.
"We haven’t decided what we’re going to do," says T. Boone Pickens, the Dallas tycoon who has raised more than $1 million for Mr. Giuliani, the former New York City mayor, since late 2006….

Then you get to the opinion pages, where pundits struggle to understand just why this iconoclast keeps winning:

John McCain beat Mitt Romney by 5.5 points in New Hampshire and by five again in Florida. Three months ago, Mr. McCain was a 10% cipher in Florida, with no organization and no donors. This week one saw why John McCain is basically five points better than Mitt Romney, or Rudy Giuliani, at the most fundamental job in politics — connecting.
When Mr. McCain took the stage in Sun City, the applause was polite. When he finished, he got a standing ovation. He has been at this game a long time, and his ability to sense and ride the emotional flow of an audience is astonishing.
It discomfits some, including me, that Mr. McCain seems like a live, capped volcano. But in front of an audience like this, and before a younger group two days later at the Tampa Convention Center, he stood with that tight, little upper body of coiled electricity and plugged his message of honor, commitment and threat straight into the guts of his listeners….

Finally, one must turn to the oracle itself, the very LEAD EDITORIAL of the hallowed WSJ, under the headline, "McCain’s Apostasies" (I am not making this up!), to learn this:

Mr. McCain’s great political strength has also long been his main weakness, which is that his political convictions are more personal than ideological. He believes in duty, honor and country more than he does in any specific ideas.
These personal qualities are genuine political assets, and they are part of his appeal as a potential Commander in Chief. Among other things, they help explain why he held firm on Iraq when the fair-weather hawks lost their resolve. But he is now on the cusp of leading a coalition that also believes in certain principles, and its "footsoldiers" (to borrow a favorite McCain word) need to be convinced that the Senator is enough on their side to warrant enthusiastic support…

You can just see them all thinking, Whaddayagonna DO with a guy who believes in "duty, honor and country" more than he believes in, I don’t know, some worthwhile idea like cutting taxes? How can you trust a guy like that? How can you turn your back on him?

The thing that gets me is that these people are dead serious. They think "duty, honor and country" are all very well and good in a Boy Scout, or a character in a movie or something, but a little bit dangerous in a Leader of the Free World.

I am so glad that for once we’ve got an alternative — and maybe by the time it’s over, two alternatives — to the greedheads on one side who think "Me First and the Gimme-Gimmes" is an "idea," and one to live by, and those on the other side who think what this country needs is somebody to FIGHT with Republicans, as though virtue is thus defined. Thank the Lord for John McCain and Barack Obama.

bradwarthen.com

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